


Things We Choose Not to See

by Deannie



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere along the way in the last 72 hours—somewhere between the poker game and the race to stop that stagecoach and the fight once they got there and the knifing and the long, painful ride home ponying Buck along as he bled in his own saddle—Ezra had had enough. He was done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Choose Not to See

Ezra Standish hissed in pain and decided he’d seen enough of the sure, swift fingers bent on stitching up the two day old slash in his leg. He decided instead to look over at the bunk across from the rickety cot he sat on. Buck Wilmington lay sleeping peacefully, his bullet wound finally taken care of by a proper healer.

Buck hadn’t been terribly conscious by the end of the trip, but he’d roused enough to bellow in pain as Chris and Josiah had held him down so Nathan could dig the bullet out.

Ezra had waited his turn patiently, explaining what had happened to an irate and worried Larabee, and tried to endure Nathan’s scolding about the condition of his own knife wound. It had hurt like Hellfire when the healer had cleaned it out, having to cut through badly healing skin to get at the infection.

It would scar, of course—it had simply been left untended too long, but he’d hardly had the time or strength to get Buck back here alive, much less worry about his much less serious injury.

One more scar for the collection, and honestly, right now Ezra didn’t have the energy to care. Nor did he have the energy to pretend he didn’t care about the irritation and scorn blatant on Nathan’s face when he’d heard how an innocent card game had gone so wrong. Though this was hardly Ezra’s fault.

Nathan Jackson made him tired sometimes. The man was smart—amazingly smart—not well-read in any classical sense, but certainly one to understand the kind of wit Ezra was fond of. He expected that was why the black man got along with Josiah so well.

But he was, by far, the most _self-righteous_ man Ezra had ever met. And while he seemed to like Ezra in his way—and Ezra liked him in his, much to his surprise—he approved of almost nothing Ezra did. Ever. Not his work, not his actions, not the words that came out of his mouth nor the way that he said them.

“And what, pray tell, have I done to invoke your ire today, Mr. Jackson?” he asked quietly.

Nathan’s hands stilled for a split second before continuing their work. “You ain’t done nothing, Ezra,” he lied badly. “Just let me bind this up and I’ll get you back to that comfy feather bed of yours.”

Of course. Because Nathan wouldn’t want a conman like him to soil the clinic for too long.

“What exactly is your problem with me, Mr. Jackson?” Ezra finally asked the question he’d been thinking on for far too long. “We have worked together—quite well at times—for nearly six months now, and I believe I have a right to know.”

Nathan snorted. “What’s my problem? Where do I start?” Lord, he could be high and mighty, couldn’t he?

Ezra flashed back to his first impression of Nathan Jackson, finding that at least some of his initial opinion hadn’t changed, despite their occasionally cordial relationship now.

“My profession—vile though it is—is occasionally of some use, you know?”

“Yeah, fleecing honest people out of their hard-earned money,” Nathan muttered, tying off the last stitch carefully.

Somewhere along the way in the last 72 hours—somewhere between the poker game and the race to stop that stagecoach and the fight once they got there and the knifing and the long, painful ride home ponying Buck along as he bled in his own saddle—Ezra had had enough. He was done.

“And the men who were trying to rob that stagecoach?” he asked coldly. “The ones who would no doubt happily have slit the throats of that woman and her two young sons, had Mr. Wilmington and myself not been alerted to their plans because of my attempt to _fleece them_ the night before? How hard did they work, do you think, to earn their money?”

Nathan gave ground on that one, grudgingly. “I suppose sometimes even the devil falls into doing good.”

Ezra looked at the neat clean stitches across the angry flesh of his leg, hearing Nathan turn to his stove—no doubt to inflict another noxious poultice on him. He couldn’t win with Nathan. The curse of the South never seemed to die.

“I cannot help where I was born, nor how I was raised,” he finally murmured.

The healer gave him a dark, cold look at that, coming back with the promised poultice and wrapping it around his leg. It burned fiercely and Ezra barely caught Nathan’s angry words. “That don’t make no difference to me.”

Ezra almost laughed at the subtle emphasis on _me._ That was like saying money didn’t matter to _him._ “I beg to differ.”

Nathan looked up at him. “I met me a lot of good white folk from the South,” he defended himself.

“Among whom you seem disinclined to count me.”

His companion stilled, blew out a deep breath. “You ain’t as bad as you seem,” he finally allowed.

Ezra did laugh now. “Faint praise, indeed, Mr. Jackson.” God, but his head hurt.

Nathan seemed to seriously ponder his own reactions for a long moment. When he spoke, Ezra was unsurprised to hear defensiveness in his tone. “I’m not the only one to care what another man is,” he challenged. “I ain’t the one refused to ride with _you_.”

Ezra laid back carefully on the cot, closing his eyes and leaning awkwardly against the wall as his leg continued to burn. He couldn’t believe he was actually having this discussion.

“Would it surprise you to know that my reticence was not simply because you are a negro?” Inwardly, he was shocked at himself. The truth of his first assessment of Nathan wasn’t something he ever needed to tell anyone—least of all Nathan himself.

“Why then?” Nathan wanted to know. Ezra was surprised at the hurt in his colleague’s voice. “What was it about _me,_ against all those white men?”

Ezra wished he’d never lost his temper. This could only end badly, and yet, he found himself unwilling to lie. Truth was, he’d grown to like many things about Nathan Jackson. He’d come to appreciate the man’s dedication and caring and compassion and downright pig-headed grit.

But it didn’t mean he wasn’t right in his first thoughts about the man.

“I was in Four Corners for nearly a week before those idiots tried to lynch you,” he said finally, keeping his eyes closed as Nathan wrapped a bandage around the poultice. Ezra could feel his fever going back up again. Maybe he could blame that for the words he was going to say.

“It makes sense to get the lay of the land when coming into a new town,” he continued. “Especially one as rough and tumble as our volatile little burgh. So I watched. Mr. Tanner managed to blend into the woodwork nicely—which I am sure was his plan—and Mr. Wilmington was slightly more colorful than your average rutting peacock and all the more ignorable for it, but you… I saw you with your medical bag and your herbs, and the patients you had coming and going from your clinic, and—”

“—And you were surprised they’d let a darky practice medicine on ‘em?”

Ezra opened his eyes in irritation at the interruption. “I was surprised they put up with your sanctimonious nature, frankly,” he snapped back. “You treated those people as if they hadn’t the common sense God gave a magpie, as if they’d simply expire without listening to your wisdom.” He snorted, not even bothering to see how his words were affecting the other man in the room. “Shocking though it may seem, not every thought in my head as regards a black man goes back to the color of his skin nor the right of his freedom.”

“Or lack of,” Nathan cut in quietly. He was clearly hurt by what Ezra had said, clearly pained that one of his colleagues thought so little of him. _Perhaps you know a little of how I feel, Mr. Jackson._

“What’d you think, Ezra—really?” Nathan stood up and turned away, putting up his herbs. “You think ‘That uppity nigger! What does he think he’s doing, treating white folk that way?’”

Ezra froze. Because, honestly, the phrase “uppity negro,” has passed through his mind on that first day, when he’d seen Nathan berating a young white man in the street for not coming to him immediately with a wound that had festered. He remembered Maude’s admonishment not to use such words for fear of offending a mark. And Nathan had hardly been a mark…

God, he hated being tired and hurt and at the end of his rope. Made it damn hard to lie to himself about things he chose not to see.

Nathan had obviously turned back just in time to see the horror that ran across Ezra’s face, because his voice was softer now. “You didn’t even know you was thinking it, did you?” he asked, coming over and sitting next to Ezra’s cot, reaching out to feel for the fever that was only getting worse, in Ezra’s opinion. “Just come out of you,” he murmured. “You don’t even realize you can’t see us like other people.”

Ezra’s mind rolled that thought over for a moment, and came up with an answer to his own current anger. “Not unlike seeing a gambler at a poker table and assuming he’s a cheat.”

Nathan shook his head. “Ain’t the same, Ezra,” he disagreed. “I judge you by what I see you do, not the color of your skin.”

So, no way to win at all. “I should think you had more to look at than my self-serving ways at the poker table.” He was tired. Wasn’t _trying_ to do the right thing enough? “I realize that I am hardly a paragon of virtue, Mr. Jackson, but surely you can concede that I have managed to do _some_ good for the people of this town?” He wished his own exhaustion and hurt hadn’t turned it into a question.

Nathan was quiet long enough that Ezra wondered if the man wasn’t just hoping his patient would fall asleep so they could stop having this very uncomfortable conversation. Maybe they _should_ just pretend it never happened. They could go on being at turns cordial—even pleasant—and at turns rude and judgmental. They weren’t obliged to be friends, after all. It wasn’t in the job description.

“Ezra…” The man was clearly thinking about every word he said, each sentence measured and weighted. “You frustrate the Hell out of me. I watch you, and it seems like the only thing you want in your whole damn life is money. Someone else’s money.” _It’s only theirs until it’s mine,_ Ezra thought inanely as the harsh words continued. “You steal and you cheat and you don’t give a damn ‘bout nothing except your own pleasure.”

Nathan’s tone became so angry now that Ezra opened his eyes and looked into the other man’s face, seeing total confusion. “Then, suddenly, you’re taking little kids under your wing and protecting them and saving women and children from stagecoach robbers and jumping into the line of fire for no other reason than you figure it’s a means to an end to make sure the bad guys lose, even if you get killed in the process.” Well now, that last was going a _bit_ too far… “Ezra, I just don’t get how you can be so wrong and so good—why you don’t just choose good _all_ the time?”

He honestly had no answer to that. He was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to, either. “I rather think it’s God’s job to answer that. Perhaps you could ask Josiah.”

Nathan stood up, running a hand over his scalp, clearly annoyed at himself for having said anything. “See, and then you gotta make a joke of everything!” he exploded.

“It wasn’t a joke, Nathan,” Ezra replied quietly. He waited until his companion turned back to him. He was struggling to stay awake—had no idea how he was getting back to his room at the saloon when he couldn’t even contemplate rising—but something compelled him to continue. For both Nathan and himself. “I know I am often in the wrong, Nathan—it isn’t news to me. And yes, I look at you and I see the slaves on my uncle’s plantation who saw me as nothing more than a slaver in training and the escaped slaves who only had to hear my voice to hate me and the Yankees who thought that the only good reb was a dead reb.” He smiled wryly. “And even the sanctimonious healer who still bosses his patients around like they’re so many errant children.” He took a deep breath, holding off the darkness for a minute more. “But I also see a man who, while the ghosts of that damn war were coming down on him and his, looked at the Southerner in his midst and tried to help him when he didn’t even want to suffer your touch.” He rotated his shoulder unconsciously, remembering how Nathan had looked at him that day in the Seminole village—eager and kind and just wanting to help no matter the color of his skin or the sound of his voice. After a long moment of silence, he couldn’t figure out whether he’d run out of things to say, or just the strength to say them.

“Guess we all pretty complicated,” Nathan muttered finally. There was a hint of amusement to his voice that Ezra hoped meant, perhaps, they might just put this all behind them. “You done good out there, Ezra—with the stagecoach. Getting Buck home.”

“Thank you,” Ezra whispered. He really had no idea how he was getting home…

Nathan shook out a blanket and spread it over him as Ezra tried to rally. A firm, dark hand on his shoulder stopped him. “But you need to rest. And Lord, but you need to learn how to take care of basic wounds, if you’re going keep doing damn fool things like that.”

It wouldn’t be a bad idea, Ezra thought. Not that he was going to keep jumping in front of knives. Although the young woman on the stagecoach had been quite lovely, so it had certainly been worth the risk. Married, sadly, but lovely…

And as black as the queens of Nubia…

* * * * * * *  
The End


End file.
